Mat Jenner:
Dreams Time Free

Dreams Time Free an exhibition by Mat Jenner, presents new works alongside his on-going project Foam. Jenner’s practice is grounded in collage, collection, distribution and display. For Jenner, these strategies have the potential for cultural agency and mirror our everyday experience of production, consumption and spectatorship.

For the duration of Dreams Time Free, Jenner will transform the gallery into a social space and changing display environment for ephemeral material and distributed artworks. These works are made from reconstituted and appropriated found image materials – photographs, jpegs, adverts, cuttings, signage, magazines and newspapers – sourced from circulation and passed through the ‘digestive tract’ of the artist studio where they are exposed to the daily activity of artistic production. Consumption becomes a positive productive action with the resulting ‘excreted’ works, formatted for display in the gallery and for wider distribution around Grand Union in Digbeth.

Alongside this changing display of distributed material, Jenner will present a further iteration of his on-going project Foam.

Conceived as an indistinct and mercurial format, Foam occupies multiple display propositions. It is simultaneously an archive, an experimental commissioning platform, a group exhibition and an expansive on-going artwork. Foam consists of a mass collection of commissioned one-off 12” dub plate records by 115 contemporary artists. These works can only be presented within strict parameters that are intended to emphasise each record’s status as a material art object.

“Each record is unique; they can only be listened to in situ within Grand Union’s physical location. They are not replicated, broadcast or digitally disseminated.”

Audiences are encouraged to interact with the archive by selecting and playing individual artworks through a bespoke record player and speaker system. To mark Foam’s time at Grand Union, and our 5 year anniversary, we, in collaboration with Jenner, have commissioned further artists to make new audio works for inclusion. Newly commissioned contributing artists include Heather Philipson, Julia Crabtree and William Evans, Tris Vonna-Michell, Emma Hart, Maia Conran, Holly Antrum and Phil Hession.

A full list of artists and works available within Foam can be found at www.ffooaamm.org.

Mat Jenner will talk about his exhibition Dreams Time Free, currently showing at Grand Union. The exhibition includes Foam, a mass collection of one-off 12” dub plate records by 115 contemporary artists, which visitors are invited to listen to in the gallery.

Mat will discuss some of the ideas behind the collection and how it links with other works in the show.

Altered Yesterdays (in association with Flatpack Festival)
Saturday 28 March 2015 2–5.30pm
A series of talks by archivists and artists. Mat Jenner will be speaking about his Foam archive, and distribution/dissemination strategies.